Well, it's been a week and I haven't done anything about my oven yet. I need to dig out my warranty and call GE. Even if the part I broke isn't covered they can at least tell me if the ignitor is the right part that I need to get. In the mean time, Cassandra from Tripping around the Sun told me that I could get a timer, like the ones that you'd use for Christmas lights, to put on my crock pot so that my food doesn't over cook. What a great way to make your own smart pot! I bought one for $5 from Walmart and I put two crock pot meals on the menu this week. Friday's menu is one I need to put in the oven, but I think it will fit in one of my smaller casserole dishes and I can throw it in the big 'ol toaster oven. Have I mentioned I love my toaster oven. Well I do. Just thought I'd announce that. On to the menu.

 

Monday
Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup

Tuesday
Easy Slow Cooker French Dip
Tater Tots

Wednesday
2nd chance Meals

Thursday
Slow Cooker Chicken Dinner

Friday
Chicken & Spinach Pasta Bake

For more weekly menus, check out the Organizing Junkie.

Happy Sew Crafty Friday. I got the socks done last week but was unable to post. They have already been given to their happy recipient, but I took some pics before I gave 'em away. Here they are finished.

The stripes don't line up perfectly, but I'm still pretty happy with them. That was the only picture I got of them on the floor because I had helpers. Here's Katie showing us that...

 

...these socks are not one size fits all.

"Mommy, take a picture of me!" Can you tell we had eggs for breakfast? Egg yokes really bring out the blue in her eyes, dontcha think?

Okay, back to the socks. Here's what they look like on. Those are my feet. I cleaned 'em first. Luckily my friend doesn't mind that we all tried on her socks.

 

I'm still working on the red blanket but my hook went missing. That happens alot. Kids can find all kinds of imaginative things to do with crochet hooks, so there isn't anything to post on that project.

Here's my surprise project. I'm knitting. I starting teaching myself to knit a few years ago but always put it down in favor of the much faster (for me anyway) crocheting. Since I've been posting on Sew Crafty Friday I've found myself inspired by one the other participants. PuritySeekers makes some beautiful stuff (and you can win some of it by entering the contest on her site) which she sells on her etsy shop. One of the things I've loved the most is the knit longies she makes. Because I'm a big ol' copycat I seached and found this pattern at knitty.com. Beware, the baby on that page will make you want one! Here's the pic:

I'm doing a couple of things different on this pattern. First of all, I didn't want to buy two sets of needles, a circular and a set of dpns, so I learned to do the magic loop on the circular needles. I learned how to do it from a couple of videos on youtube.com. Here's one of the videos I learned from. Do a search for "magic loop" on you tube if you want to find more.

 

That's it for now. If you want to see more crafts head over to Shereen's site for Sew Crafty Friday.

Since I broke my oven this weekend everything will have to be made using the stovetop and toaster oven. I have a crockpot but since we are away from the home about 10 hours everything burns. It's my bedtime now so here's the menu:

Monday
Orance flavored chicken
White rice

Tuesday
Grilled Cheese sandwiches
Tomato Soup

Wednesday
Thai Curry Chicken
Sushi Rice

Thursday
Leftover Buffet

Friday
Take out

For more weekly menus check out the Organizing Junkie. Night!

PS Since I didn't get to do Sew Crafty Friday this week, take a look at the socks I finished on my loom. Too cute! I'll try to talk about them this Friday.

I had every intention of posting the past few days, and even started my Sew Crafty Friday this morning but there is just too much going on. Nothing bad, well besides I broke my oven and the icky rash came back. I broke my oven because I'm a dummy and put room temp water in a hot class dish. The explosion that occurred didn't break the oven though. When we were cleaning the oven I told hubby that some of the glass got under the metal piece that was blocking the heating element so he took metal piece off let me clean it. That didn't break the oven either. When I got the big pieces of glass out of the oven I wanted to vacuum the little shards so hubby did it for me and barely hit the ignitor on the oven. That broke the oven. Or it at least broke off that piece and I'm scared to try my oven. I'm not quite sure what we are going to do about it.

The other thing that is going on is that the itching is back. You may remember this picture from an earlier post.

Well, the bumps are back with a vengence. Last week they were all over my arms, legs, back and face. Everywhere I put sunscreen two days before. I didn't take pictures this time. I think my mother in law (hi Mom!) was hoping I would. She told me that when she couldn't find any good pictures of people with leporacy so she took this one in to show her Sunday School kids. LOL. My doctor thinks this may be an allergic reaction to my sunscreen. He sent me home with some samples to self test but the bumps haven't gone away enough for me to try. So for now I just itch.

That's the update for now. Look forward to an interesting menu tomorrow with my broken oven. Night.

 

Welcome back to Sew Crafty Friday. Last week I showed off the first couple rows of the blindingly red baby blanket. This week I'm proud to present the over half done but still blindingly red baby blanket. I just started skein number 4 out of 5. Hopefully I bought enough yarn, but I think I'm going to wish I had got one more skein. The pattern is by Red Heart and it's called Crochet Baby Ripple.

Since I don't know any one legged people I have also started the mate to the schooners socks. I'm trying to keep my tension even so the stripes line up with the first sock. So far it looks good. I could try counting all the rows to make sure they both match but who really wants to do that? Not me.

My kids have been on a roll lately with some of the funny things they say and do. I thought I'd share some of them here.

My son and I were leaving the library and getting into the car. I asked him to please get in on his side of the car, so of course he ran to his sister's side to get in. The following conversation happened:

Me: "Connor, what did I ask you to do?"
Him: "To get in on my side of the car."
Me: "And did you do that."
Him: "No."
Me: "Connor, do you know, that when I ask you to do something it's not to be mean, but because I want to keep you safe. What if I was asking you to get in on your side of the car because there was a snake on Katie's side of the car?"
Him: "There was a snake?"
Me: "No, but what if there was?"
Him: "And it was going to bite me?"
Me: "Yes, if there was a snake he could have bit you."
Him: "But I didn't see a snake."
Me: "There wasn't one, but what if there was one."
Him: "He was going to bite me. Where was he?"
Me: "Nevermind. Forget I said it."
After a few moments of silence I quietly hear from the backseat, "Man, why is there always snakes?"

The other day I was resting on the couch while the rest of my family was upstairs. My daughter had been in her room and must have put on one of her dresses because I heard my husband exclaim, "Oh you look so pretty! Go show Mommy and ask her if you look pretty." My daughter stood at the top of the stairs and yelled, "MOMMY! I'M PRETTY!" I guess she didn't need any validation from me!

Last weekend my lovely sister in law had my children over to spend the night at her home. In the morning she asked Connor to go let his uncle know that he could get in the shower and she'd have pancakes ready when he was done. My son went up stairs and told his uncle, "You better get in the shower or your not getting any pancakes!"

Last one, this one happened yesterday. My son asked if he could stay with me and watch TV. I told him it was alright as long as he sat on the couch quietly because Mommy had a headache and loud noises made Mommy hurt. This happened:

Him: "Mommy, I'm sorry I gave you a headache."
Me: "I'm okay honey. You didn't give me a headache."
Him: "Oh. Okay. I'm sorry Katie gave you a headache then."

it's another fun filled Menu Plan Monday. Woo Hoo! Last week I was MIA. I cooked a whole bunch of food for my son's birthday party and when the weather started to look stormy we canceled it. He was sad but we still had my mom and Pat's mom over, plus Pat's sister and her family stopped by to drop off a gift for him. However, that wasn't enough to plow thru the cowboy beans, fresh corn casserole, bacon wrapped jalepeno thingys, chicken wings and turkey roll ups, so we ate them all week long.

For the past few weeks I've been coveting Candi's diet menu. It sounds so tasty! It also made me want to go to Trader Joe's, which I did tonight. One of the things she is munching on is celery sticks or carrot sticks with almond butter. I know that Trader Joe's has almond butter so I went there to stare at it. LOL. I didn't buy it but I got several other things for my menu this week, like the Orange Flavored Chicken was in the Freezer section and the Fettucini noodles were bought there too. BTW, Candi is doing her diet thru www.perfectweightamerica.com. I signed up there too but don't expect to see any diet recipes up anytime soon, I have freezer meals to finish off. LOL. Here's the menu:

MONDAY
Fettucini Alfredo
Salad
Cheese toast

TUESDAY
Green Chicken Enchiladas
Spanish Rice
Refried Beans

WEDNESDAY
2nd Chance Meals

THURSDAY
Orange Flavored Chicken
Sushi Rice

FRIDAY
Crispy Baked Chicken
Mashed Potatos & Gravy
Cream Corn

For more menus check out the Organized Junkie.

Hooray! I finished a sock! I bought my sock loom about six months ago, and although I love working on it, I always ended up ripping out the socks I started. When I see a mistake I really want to fix it, and I don't know how to fix something on my looms, so out it goes. This is the first sock pattern I've found that hides my mistakes pretty well. Here's a picture of the finished project:

I love the colors. Now, here's a couple of me modeling it:

And, once again, a close up of the work:

I'm very pleased with how it came out, and so far have gotten a lot of rave reviews from the people I've shown it to. Some of them are even hand knitters! My kitchener's stitch was a litte wonky but I'm sure I'll learn, I have a lot more sock yarn to work up. Darn those sales.

Speaking of sales, here is another project I'm working on, I like to have two going:

It's the same kind of yarn that I used for the baby blanket I posted before, but a different color, of course. The baby clouds yarn is about $4 a skein where I buy it. This Bright & Lofty stuff was found on Smiley's yarn for only $1 a skein. You can find all kinds of discounted yarn there, but you have to buy at least $40 at time plus $12 shipping and handling. I ended up buying 25 skeins of this stuff, 5 of every color they had in stock. I was going to loom it all into blankets but I had a hard time picturing this red (color: jellybean) as a loomed blanket so I decied to crochet it using this pattern. I took this picture 2 days ago and It's actually about a fifth done now. I can't believe how fast this works up. I also bought 8 skeins of color waves for a future project. Just thought I'd throw that in case you were like, "Hey, 25 skeins at a dollar each is only $25 dollars, what else did you get!" Or am I the only one that does that?

I'm off to start another sock and work on a blanket. For more "Sew Crafty Fridays" visit Sharleen's blog.

For more Wordless Wednesdays go here.

Welcome to another edition of Sew Crafty Friday. Last week I put my daughter in her new dress I crocheted for her and we went to the park for a photo shoot. I washed her clean, blew her hair dry and was hoping for something sweet and girly. Instead, I got action shots. Hubby took these photos:

First, Katie ran away over here.

When Daddy caught on to her shenanigans she ran away over here.

In this shot I think she has decided to try and fly away from intrusive camera. Doesn't she look like Superman about to take off?

Still not a good shot of the dress, but hey, she's not running anymore.

Yes, I'm talking about you.

Oops! Spoke too soon, there she goes.

Well, with all that running we did manage to get one good shot of her in the dress. She looks miserable but the dress is nice. If you're interested in this pattern check out the Crochet Garden. The directions on this pattern are super easy to follow and there are NO seams.

Aside from chasing my daughter I've found some time to work on a new project. It's actually an old project that I frogged and started over.

This is my sock loom from DA Looms.

On it is the leg and heel part of one sock. I'm using Opal yarn in the "Crazy" line. I don't have the label so I can't recall what shade or number it is. I do know that yarn is from Germany and I like to smell it. I tried to get a picture of the heel but until I get a little more of the foot done it is too hard to see. Instead, take a gander at this close up of the stitches.

Pretty cool, huh?

That's it for tonight. Thanks for stopping by! But before you go, if you have a blog where you post your crafts, leave a comment, I'd love to take look!